


Ignition Sequence

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, hey did you know that the rapid evening is pretty fucked up, pre-Twilight Mirage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 17:44:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13323231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: Satellite Observer Gray Gloaming, two hours from deployment.





	Ignition Sequence

**Author's Note:**

> Categorically banned from writing longer fic while I work on pinning down The Novel, I'm throwing vignettes at everyone's heads instead. I'm kind of fascinated by the fact that Gray threw over her entire life and gave up her body to _go on an adventure._ Buddy.
> 
> I have no idea how the Rapid Evening actually works, I just know I don't trust it. Wild Interpretation is my middle name. \o/

In these high and echoing corridors that slice neatly through the central structures of Headquarters, through the peripheral structures that spider out from Crystal Palace, Satellite Observer Gray Gloaming's footsteps are a neat tap, tap, tap: metal soles on polished stone floor. This is the most naturalistic of her chassis, and in truth she feels rather off-balance in it, used to those designed for greater agility, greater speed, not limited to the idea of two legs and two arms. 

Used to no chassis at all. 

She is a very young Satellite indeed. She had skin and bones and a physical brain, with its limited malleability and processing power, for far longer than she has been data. 

And even so.

"It will be necessary to take you offline for 7.3 seconds at exactly 17:50, Central time," the technician walking with her says. "Some people might find the sight unnerving, so be sure to either warn them ahead of time or step outside. After that, the core transfer will be finished. It's all looking good."

"And if I find the process unnerving?" Gray asks. To smile is a reflex that persists even when one is data, expressed as an eccentric flutter of energy. In this chassis, it translates smoothly into the old physical movement of the face.

"Then I doubt you'd have managed to become a Satellite at all," the technician says, with a patience which suggests she doesn't find Gray particularly amusing. "That process is the one that gets people."

"Some people don't like going to the dentist even when they've had brain surgery, Technician Bright," Gray says.

Relents.

"I'll remember your advice," she says to the poor technician. "I can find my way from here. I used to live here. It's fine. Promise."

Here is the office door. A tap on it, prompting it to open.

A step. A step. A step.

Keen Forester Gloaming blinks at her—comes over to her with surprising speed—throws his arms around her, quick and tight and gone again. Sharply. She feels the hug, in an odd way. Would have liked the moment to last longer so she could have considered the sensation. Fine-tuned this chassis' responses. Optimized them.

Well, and because it's been a while since she saw him. A nice sort of concession, to allow them to go to the final briefing together. Enough time for a short personal call.

"Primary Observer Demani Dusk," he says, turning to the woman who's standing, arms folded, by his desk. "Since she appears to be here, allow me to introduce you to your Satellite. Gray, this is Demani. Perhaps you remember her. You'll make one another's acquaintance properly by the ordinary channels in a few hours."

"This is unusual," Gray says. "Unconventional. Father. Did you double-book us?"

He sighs. He has grown a little older. Oh, yes, fine: she could name how many minutes older, how many seconds. Leave it at that, though. He has grown a little older. And she has not.

He looks past her, out a window that opens onto a riotous garden, glass for its roof, every strange turn of a branch manicured into the appearance of carefree life.

She looks instead towards Demani Dusk. Dark skin, lips painted a purple that edges on black. Something slick about every styled line of her. Something hard-edged in the set of her shoulders. Her mouth.

In-person contact between Satellites and Primaries is a monitored, carefully bounded thing. Rules and failsafes. They have met before, though. A catalogue of occasions, neatly sorted. Inconsequential, largely. None recent.

Demani's smile says she's got a good idea of what's going on here. Soft lines deepen at one corner of her mouth. Her eyes flick from Gray's father to Gray herself. Whatever she believes is happening, there's no way to verify its correctness with the existing data.

"Guess so," she says.

"I should go anyway," Gray says, although she could just as well step outside for a moment and then come back. "Maintenance. You know. I'll be in the living room."

Gray Gloaming is more observant than any ordinary human, and she does not miss the minute tension in her father's neck at the word _maintenance_. But he lost that fight years ago. After two seconds, he lets it go.

"I thought it right—" he says to Demani Dusk, as the door closes behind Gray, and Gray doesn't wait to find out where that sentence might end—walks down familiar corridors to the section of the building where long-serving agents are granted quarters. Stands her chassis neatly in a corner of her childhood home and reads a book while she waits for the clean cut of temporary disconnection. She thinks, idly—I don't suppose someone like Demani has ever had trouble pulling the trigger on a Satellite in simulations.

Cuts out on the mental image of detonation.

Cuts back in to the blip of a message. 

Transfer complete.

Two hours to deployment.

She taps her feet experimentally. Dancing steps to her old favourite sofa. Falls back into the cushions and is aware that they are soft. Looking up at the ceiling, she makes a record of all the places where panel joints are just visible. The number of light fixtures. The exact quality of the light they cast. Closest approximation: a summer day with 32% cloud cover, 4pm, two miles south of the city. Her fourteenth birthday. The texture of apple bark under her hands as she swung from a creaking branch. Dust on her shoes. Alone, everyone in her family at work. 

Boredom began to blossom in her then, its root structure already too deep to be removed.

Six years later, after five more birthdays with 32% cloud cover—she died. Excited terror on a bed in the transfer centre. The slip of her consciousness was quick, but not as clean as being switched off and on again. It fluttered, a butterfly growing tired of butting up against glass. They had removed her body before she came back online. Her father's face was very still, looking at the unit which housed her personhood—the first thing they gave her, easing her into contact with the world, sensor after sensor, monitoring equipment, more and more until she could drown in the deluge.

Gray blinks away the slip-slide of association. Here, now: the click of the door as her father comes in. 

"It should be a good assignment," he says. "Agent Dusk is someone I trust. And by all accounts the Mirage is beautiful. I don't believe that the fleet is far from the end now. Perhaps a longer deployment than your first, but not by much."

"Alright," Gray says, straightening herself out into a more proper position, knees together, feet side by side on the floor. Shoulders squared. 

"Your need for adventure will be the end of me," he says, studying her—suspecting her dissatisfaction. "Be careful, Gray."

"Hmm," she says.

He sighs.

"I'll be careful," Gray says, and finds that her chassis is shifting a little where it sits—rather like her old body did when she lied.


End file.
